My list to tell you all about includes: Chronicle; Surf; Milk; Saw & Tank; Tree Man; Dipole; Xtreme in Hamilton. So here's the detail:
Chronicle
I've made it into the Raglan Chronicle again! This time on the 'Enviro Matters' page written by our friend Bexie. The subject is ReMake, ReUse, ReCycle, Re etc (although no REDUCE which is the most important part of the holy trinity!). It features my wetsuit fan & mentions some of the things we've done on our vans. It also mentions 'Felix' & his crazy home-made electronic musical instruments. He sounds cool. He apparently makes Theremins from old bits 'n bobs whereas I can't make my Theremin from a kit work. Yep Mum & Dad, I've made the kit but haven't managed to calibrate it yet. If it didn't work at all that would almost be better because then I'd know I'd made a mistake. Moving on from this digression (can there really be 1600 files still to transfer?) & on to another & far more worthy story from the chronicle, Phil (who jointly runs 'Solscape' with his wife Bernadette) & a few others went down to Port Taranaki to demonstrate against deep-sea oil exploration off the West Coast. They managed to get a great photo (despite being prevented every step of the way by the Police), all sat on their surfboards with the exploration ship lurking in the background. A great quote was, 'The point is that globally, the easy to get oil is gone. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. The deep sea oil that the government is enticing these companies to come & get resembles the hard-to-get fruit at the top of the tree that requires you to hang off the top of the ladder. Its extraction is very risky'. To exploit any finds will need similar drilling methods to those that went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico & a much less publicised one between Indonesia & Western Australia in 2009 (I only knew about it because I met a worker from the rig on extended holiday in Bali at the same time as me. It was huge but because it wasn't near any population centres no media cared). I realise that my current business doesn't exactly make me dark-green but its still a big issue we all need to face. Link here
Surf
This evening, big, good waves but I only got back from Hamilton as dusk was falling. I jumped in & mostly got beaten by the waves but it was good exercise & good fun. I've been surfing Indicators a fair bit recently & am still finding it a great challenge.
Milk
There's apparently only one gas pipe from the oil fields of Taranaki to the North. Well, there is also a tiny one but that didn't help when the main one ruptured. This meant that Fronterra (NZ's Milk processing company) couldn't do its job & so asked most farmers to dump their milk. One local farmer wanted to do all he could to reduce this waste so offered it to anyone with containers. We've been drinking un-pasteurised, full fat milk for the last 2 days now while eating home-made cheese. Its lovely if a bit rich! Milk is dreadful for waterways - I'm sure I read that 1 part milk removes the oxygen from 100 parts of water. Apparently the line should be fixed tomorrow so hopefully the waste will stop.
Saw & Tank
Work has begun again on the grey water tank project & I've found that the bit of van I bought to use as a template is from a short wheelbase Toyota! No panic, it just means I need to cut a load of bits off it. However after destroying a grinding wheel, shattering a cutting disc & overloading my dremel I've had to invest in another new toy - a reciprocating saw. So I now have jigsaw, circular saw & the recip. You all thought I was creative whereas the opposite's true!
Tree Man
Months ago our estate agent/property manager person promised our trees would get trimmed so that we could see the estuary while sitting out on our deck, not just standing on tip toes. Finally the guy came & promptly cut himself with his chainsaw! Luckily it wasn't too bad - just a few stitches & he came back the next day to finish the job (on the trees not his hand). Its a scary reminder that you've got to give tools respect & I'm very glad it wasn't a harsher lesson (I'm pretty certain I'm not as glad as he is).
Dipole
TradeMe is the equivalent of eBay & it's good. Anna got a tuner for our HiFi from it. Google is good because within a couple of clicks I'd found out how to make a 1/4 dipole aerial for the radio & now we can pick up the local station - 'Tractor FM'.
Xtreme in Hamilton
While watching the All Blacks having a tougher game than they expected to win the rugby World Cup I ran into Simon who mentioned that Raglan's Xtreme waste is potentially going to be running an electronics waste collection & management / disposal facility in Hamilton. It would need some part-time staff & would I be interested? Sounds like fun so maybe even though its a Raglan organisation I may find myself doing a little commuting..
OK, 1:15 now & still 880 files to go. Best go check xkcd.com or something..
1:41, I've added links into this & now the files are transferred. Let's see if I can make my websites work
